In the Name of the People: Pseudo-Democracy and the Spoiling of Our World

By Ivo Mosley

Are our 'democracies' truly democratic? In the Name of the People examines the myth of modern democracy and finds it wanting. The various oligarchies of the world blame the madness of modern life on the greed and stupidity of ordinary people: this book argues that, on the contrary, elites indulge a limitless greed for power and wealth under cover of 'giving the people what they want'.
As a coda to his short book, Ivo Mosley examines what true democracy has meant over the last two and a half millennia, and examines how it could be incorporated into current political structures to give them meaning, life and accountability.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Imprint Academic
• Release date: Mar 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781845405717

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Title page

In the Name of the People

Pseudo-democracy and the spoiling of our world

Ivo Mosley

SOCIETAS

essays in political

& cultural criticism

imprint-academic.com/societas

Copyright page

Copyright © Ivo Mosley, 2013

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without permission, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism and discussion.

Originally published in the UK by

Imprint Academic, PO Box 200, Exeter EX5 5YX, UK

Originally distributed in the USA by

Ingram Book Company,

One Ingram Blvd., La Vergne, TN 37086, USA

2013 digital version by Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

Epigraph

The ‘sovereign people’ is fast becoming a puppet.

- Herbert Spencer

Like a rock rolling downhill,

We have reached today.

- Ishikawa Takuboku

To destroy a sufficiently deep-seated delusion it is necessary to show not only its absurdity but also its origins.

- Lewis Namier

And then I noticed!

- David Mercer, ‘For Tea on Sunday’.

One imagines that human nature would rise up incessantly against despotism: but despite men’s love of liberty and hatred of violence, most peoples are subjected to this type of government. This is easy to understand. In order to form a moderate government, powers must be knitted together, regulated, tempered and enabled to act; we must give enough ballast, so to speak, to one power that it can resist others; this is a masterpiece of legislation that chance rarely produces and that prudence is rarely allowed to produce. By contrast, a despotic government jumps into view; it is uniform throughout; only passion is needed to produce it, and everyone is capable of that.

- Montesquieu

Cover design by Andrew Smith: [e-mail]

Introduction

A wolf in sheep’s clothing is not a sheep: an elected representative claiming to be ‘democratic’ is not a democrat. Democracy has a simple meaning: ‘the people rule’. If the people are not ruling, then the nation is not a democracy. From the standpoint of the people: if we hire someone else to clean our windows, we are not cleaning them ourselves.

Until 1800, everyone knew these simple and obvious truths. Electoral representation was considered to be the very opposite of democracy. If it had to be given a name of Greek origin, the correct one was ‘elective oligarchy’ meaning ‘rule by a few whom we choose to rule us’. As the first chapter of this book relates, it was around the U.S. presidential election of 1800 that candidates first thought of calling themselves ‘democrats’ to win more votes. After that, it was a question of selling the illusion to all and sundry. A variety of different interest groups - revolutionaries, the new middle class, intellectuals and academics eager for employment - took up the claim, and by about 1920 it was generally accepted: electoral representation is democracy. How this happened is the subject of Chapters Two and Three.

The aim of this book is to demonstrate that it is time to dispense with this particular illusion and to introduce some real democracy. Electoral representation is a simple formula by which, in theory, any nation can get a good government. In practice, it is a means by which any nation can get a gigantic bureaucracy, become deeply indebted to a clique of ultra-rich people, and find its assets owned by multinational corporations. There is nothing mysterious or historically odd about this. Representation is a two-way business: representatives negotiate between ‘the people’ and those in power - whether that power is a monarch, a military government, a landed aristocracy, political parties or pure money. Representatives are human and do what they have to do, to keep their jobs. This is the subject of Chapters Five and Six.

This is not to say that electoral representation is in itself bad. As an active force, it makes absolutism less likely: the electorate is asked to give some kind of consent, every now and then, to the government it gets. What representation has made possible, however, is bamboozlement on a scale so vast it is impossible to comprehend. Almost the first thing representatives did in England when they became nominally the ‘supreme power’ (1688) was to make the questionable practices of English bankers legal (this is the subject of Chapter Four). They borrowed money from the same bankers (personally and in the name of ‘the people’) for their own projects: wars, buying up assets and putting those they dispossessed to profitable work (the profits going to themselves).

The first six chapters of this book are a negative and fragmentary picture of our civilization: a diagnostic report, in the hope that a coroner’s report won’t be needed soon. The final chapter is an attempt to show that democracy can be real and can work. Genuinely democratic practices have been included in constitutions in the past and still operate in certain places today. Democracy can be introduced, in its various forms, into our Western systems for the benefit of all, restraining the antics of the powerful and restoring some equity to relations between rich and poor.

Acknowledgements: So many people have helped me that I cannot thank them all; moreover, some insisted on anonymity. I would, however, especially like to thank my family, immediate and extended, for keeping me going; and Keith Sutherland for having what it takes to publish this book.

An apology: substantial changes have been made to parts of this book since review copies were printed and sent out. I apologise to reviewers and readers for any confusion that might arise as a result.

1. Is ‘Democracy’ Really Democracy?

There is no greater misnomer in our Western world than calling our systems of electoral representation ‘democracies’. This misnomer - or illusion - began to take hold around 1800. Before then ‘democracy’ was understood to mean the opposite of electoral representation. It meant citizens participating in government in three different ways: by voting directly on issues and appointments; by acting as part-time public officials themselves; and by being members of parliament-type assemblies selected (as juries are) by lot. These practices are all opposite to electoral representation.

Governments formed by election were understood to be not democratic but ‘oligarchic’ - meaning ‘rule by a few’ rather than ‘rule by the people’. The distinction is obvious and elementary. If we want to rule ourselves, we must be active in ruling, burdensome though that might be. If we choose others to rule us, we no longer rule ourselves: we are not democratic.

Here are some quotes from across the centuries up to 1800 to illustrate how democracy was generally understood. Whether these writers loved democracy or hated it, they did not think that elections were an essential part of the democratic process:

Herodotus (5th Century B.C.):

Democracy has the fairest of all descriptions - equality in law. Offices are filled by lot, power is held accountable, and all questions are put up for open debate. - from Histories, 3.80.6

Plato (428-348 B.C.):

And democracy comes into power when the poor are the victors, killing some and exiling some, and giving equal shares in the government to all the rest. - from Republic, book VIII.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.):

It is thought democratic if the offices are assigned by lot; for them to be elected is oligarchic. - from Politics IV,1294a.

Cicero (106-43 B.C.):

Therefore every people, or state, or republic must be ruled by an overall intelligence (consilium) if it is to last. When this is entrusted to one person, we call it monarchy; where it is undertaken by certain select people, we call it aristocracy; when it resides in the people we call it democracy (civitas popularis). - from The Republic Book I, 41,42.

Elyot, 1531:

Another public weal was among the Athenians, where equality was of estate among the people, and only by their whole consent their city and dominions were governed: which might well be called a monster with many heads. Nor never it was certain nor stable; and often times they banished or slew the best citizens, which by their virtue and wisdom had most profited to the public weal. This manner of governance was called in Greek Democratia, in Latin Popularis Potentia, in English the rule of the commonalty. - from The Book named the Governor.

Althusius (1557-1638):

The nature of democracy requires that there be liberty and equality of honours, which consist in these things: that the citizens alternately rule and obey, that there be equal rights for all, and that there be an alteration of private and public life so that all rule in particular matters and individuals obey in all matters. - from Politica, 39, 61.

Hobbes (1588-1679):

The Kinds of Soveraigntie be, as I have now shewn, but three; that is to say, Monarchie, where one Man has it; or Democracie, where the generall Assembly of Subjects hath it; or Aristocracie, where it is in an Assembly of certain persons nominated, or otherwise distinguished from the rest. - from Leviathan.

Montesquieu (1689-1755):

When, in a Republic, the people have the sovereign power, it is a democracy... Selection by lot is natural to democracy; election by choice is natural to aristocracy. - from De l’Esprit des Lois, Bk II Ch. 2.

Rousseau (1712-78):

‘Selection by lot,’ says Montesquieu, ‘is democratic in nature.’ I agree... But I have already said that real democracy is only an ideal. When election and lot are combined, positions that require special talents, such as military posts, should be filled by the former; the latter is right for cases, such as judicial offices, in which good sense, justice, and integrity are enough, because in a State that is well constituted, these qualities are common to all the citizens. - from The Social Contract.

Siéyès (1748-1836):

In democracy, citizens themselves make laws and they nominate directly their public officers. In our plan, the citizens, more or less directly, choose deputies: legislation ceases therefore to be democratic, it becomes representative.

Burke (1729-97):

[describing ‘democracy’] Here the people transacted all public business or the greater part of it, in their own persons; their laws were made by themselves and, upon any failure of duty, their officers were accountable to themselves, and to them only. - from A Letter to Lord ****

Madison (1751-1836):

In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. - from Federalist 14

From the time of Plato to the time of the French Revolution, historians, politicians and philosophers understood that elections produce oligarchies if the business of government is done in secret, and republics if the business of government is done openly.[1] The story of how elections became ‘democratic’ in the public mind is so little-known, and so glossed over by most historians and academics, that it is worth re-telling in some detail.

The change began in the eighteenth century.[2] Constitutions in Europe at that time were anything but democratic. Monarchs enjoyed power limited by law, custom, and threat of rebellion; and also by institutions such as the church and parliaments. Some portions of these parliaments - for instance the House of Commons in England - were elected. Jurists began to refer to these elected assemblies (though the vote was restricted to males with property) as the ‘democratical element’ in the otherwise undemocratic constitutions of their day. For instance, in his 1762 lectures on jurisprudence Adam Smith wrote that there were no ‘true democracies of the ancient type’ in the Europe of his day; but that within monarchical systems, electoral representation was a ‘democraticall element’. Blackstone, in his Commentary of 1765, wrote: ‘with regard to the elections of knights, citizens, and burgesses; we may observe that herein consists the exercise of the democratical part of our constitution.’

These are the beginnings of the modern tradition, of regarding representation as a ‘democratic’ procedure. The Marquis d’Argenson is credited with the first written assertion (1764) that ‘democratical elements’ could constitute ‘a democracy’ in their own right. In addition, he maintained that the kind of ‘democracy’ provided by representation was truer and better than the ‘false’ democracy of the ancients:

False democracy falls soon to anarchy: it is the government of the multitude, of a people in revolt and therefore insolent, scorning both law and reason; its tyrannical despotism is recognised in the violence of its actions and the waywardness of its deliberations. In true democracy, people act through deputies and these deputies are authorised by election. The mission of those elected by the people, and the authority resting on them, constitute public power: their duty is to stipulate for the interests of the greatest number of citizens, to save them from evils and to procure them goods.[3]

This idea of the Marquis seems to have been ignored by writers of his own generation, but it was taken up at an ominous and significant moment - 5th February 1794 - in a speech by the revolutionary Robespierre. He combined it with some resonant language taken from Montesquieu, to justify the first large-scale ‘democratic’ terror of the modern age:

Democracy is not a state in which the people, continually assembled, itself directs public affairs; still less is it a state in which a hundred thousand fragments of the people, by contradictory, hasty and isolated measures, should decide on the destiny of society as a whole; such a government has never existed and if it did, it could do nothing but throw the people back into despotism...

Democracy is a state in which the people, as sovereign, guided by laws of its own making, does for itself all that it can do well, and by its delegates what it cannot...[4] But, to establish and consolidate democracy among us, it is necessary to bring the war of liberty against tyranny to a conclusion... such is the aim of the emergency regime.[5]

These words were spoken to the National Convention. Robespierre was taking upon himself the management of the revolution, organising genocide in the Vendée and mass murder throughout France. Here, at the very origin of ‘representative democracy’ we see a phenomenon that would become familiar: a ‘leader’ claiming to represent the people, abusing his claim in the most extreme way.[6]

Selection by lot to form assemblies - the second characteristic of ‘ancient’ true democracy - was never considered as a form of government by the English, American or French revolutionaries, despite the fact that some of their favourite philosophers - Rousseau, Harrington and Montesquieu - considered lot to be the essence of democracy.[7] Several reasons have been suggested for this neglect. First, lot was considered impracticable, given the difficulties of travel and communication;[8] second, it was considered undesirable, given the lack of education and understanding in many citizens;[9] third, having fought so hard for power, revolutionaries were not about to hand it over to others.[10]

In America, the Founding Fathers did not use the word ‘democracy’ in its new sense: they used it in the old-fashioned way, meaning citizen assemblies and selection by lot. They disapproved of it mightily. Their remarks are illuminating:

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention... and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. (Madison, 1787)

The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very nature was tyranny. (Hamilton, 1787)

Democracy wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide. (John Adams, 1814)

Democracy is impracticable beyond the limits of a town. (Jefferson, 1816)

Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) is credited (perhaps wrongly, though it’s not out of character) with the statement: ‘Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.’

The system the founding fathers wanted was republican and unashamedly based on ‘rule by the few’. Jefferson wrote that power should be entrusted to a ‘natural aristocracy’ of the most talented and virtuous, replacing the old ‘artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth’. Elections would give people the right to choose those ‘natural aristocrats’. In Madison’s words, public opinion would be ‘refined and enlarged’ by passing it ‘through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country.’

The first setback in the idea of the people choosing a new ‘natural aristocracy’ was the development of the political party. How were voters to know enough about an individual standing for election to judge whether or not they were a ‘natural aristocrat’? Unless the candidate were a near neighbour, it was impossible. Political parties appeared not only as the judge of who was a ‘natural aristocrat’ but also as a rough indication as to the opinions of a candidate. From there it was an extremely short step